How to Replace the Optical Drive in a Power Mac G5

G5 towers are quite possibly the easiest Macs to upgrade, so when your SuperDrive dies, just pop in a new one.

Difficulty Level: Medium

What You Need:>Power Mac G5 tower>Samsung DVD 22x DVD Burner with LightScribe ($31.99, www.macsales.com)>Paper clip>Optional: Can of compressed air

Our art director, Robin, rocks a tricked-out Mac Pro at work, but at home her trusty steed is a Power Mac G5. Compared to her work machine, the 6-year-old G5 could qualify for Social Security benefits, but it’s still trucking along, after previous upgrades to the RAM and hard drive.

Recently, however, the SuperDrive stopped reading DVDs. And poor Robin worried this might be the final warning sign that her Mac isn’t long for this world. After all, a friend of hers bought the same one at the same time, and that G5 suffered a fatal frying of the logic board and went up to that great server farm in the sky.

But it ain’t over till it’s over, and so we picked up a new SuperDrive from OWC (www.macsales.com) for under $35. And with a little time and these instructions, the G5 is acting like its old self again. Only better.

1. Bezel Be Gone

OWC sells two models of optical drives to replace the dead SuperDrive in Robin’s G5 tower. We picked the Samsung model, but before we install it, we need to remove the plastic bezel from the front of the drive tray. Otherwise, the bezel will get caught against our G5’s case when we press the Eject key, preventing the drive from opening. So the first thing to do is stick the end of a paper clip in the drive’s tiny Eject hole and press until the drive tray pops out a little.

Open sesame.

2. Pry Baby

Pull the tray out about a third of the way, and flip the drive over. The bezel is held onto the front of the drive tray with two tiny plastic clips. We stuck our paper clip into the crack between the bezel and the tray, right next to each clip, to unclip them, then twisted the bezel right off the drive tray. You’ll need to use a little force, but try not to break the tray off, obviously.

This was the scary part.

3. Crack Open the Mac

If the G5 is running, power it down and let it cool off completely. Disconnect all the cables, including the power cable. Touch something metal to discharge any static electricity from your body. Then pull up the level on the back of the case, and remove the G5’s side panel and the clear plastic air deflector right behind it, and set those aside. Dusty in there, isn’t it? Blast out the worst of the dirt with a can of compressed air.

The G5's insides. Our broken optical drive is at the upper-left.

4. Free the Drive

First you need to disconnect the optical drive’s ribbon cable from the logic board. You’ll find the cable (it’s wide and black) under the metal shelf that your optical drive is resting on. It has a little black handle, so grab that and pull the plug out of its socket. Your optical drive is also secured by two gray levers right underneath it, so flip those levers open all the way. (Step 8 has an image of them open.)

This is the ribbon cable you need to disconnect from the logic board.

5. Drive-ectomy

Stick a few fingers up into the hole that the optical drive’s ribbon cable is coming down through, and push the back of the optical drive toward yourself. The drive will scoot out a little, but before you pull it out all the way, you need to disconnect the power cable at the back of the drive and route the ribbon cable you connected in step 4 up through the hole, so you can pull the drive out.

Our drive is almost out, but we need to disconnect the power cable from the back of it first.